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In this episode, Niki, Neil, and Natalia debate the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Golden State Killer, and the news that Americans are forgetting the Holocaust.

In this week’s episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate the historical significance of Cambridge Analytica and its relationship with Facebook, a serial bomber in Austin, and an all-white, all-male history conference at Stanford.

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil debate Donald Trump’s firing of Rex Tillerson, the New York Times publishing obituaries for women it overlooked historically, and National Geographic’s self-study of its past racist coverage.

One of the most interesting problems posed by centralized media and journalism is the problem of authorship. Any news item bears traces of the organizational processes it went through. These processes involve various interventions, by different actors. In a sense they are no less collective than those processes that add up to scientific discoveries. In both cases the notion of “authorship” is misleadingly individualistic.

Take the extreme case of op-eds. Op-eds come with an identifiable author’s signature. They are supposedly characterized by the existence of a simple, indictable origin. Does it mean they were not co-produced by the publishing organization? Does it mean they were not edited by the organization either politely through an exchange of letters and suggestions, or forcibly, through cuts, re-phrasings, and imposed titles? This may be done in the name of clarity. Yet many op-ed authors are extremely lucid writers and need no help in achieving clarity. …